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Jake Steinman said : “ It was a wonderful honor , except , I ' m not a travel agent . Travel agents ’ job description , and the services travel agents offer were never something I ' ve been familiar with . We never planned travel for anybody but I thought it was a nice honour . During the course of the year following the receipt of that award , people started knocking on my door asking for help to plan travel . And then I started to notice that every other person seemed to have someone with a disability that they were needing help with for the trip-planning . I found out that they wanted to know what a destination had in store for someone with a disability . They said , we like to go to Hawaii , what can we do there ? How accessible is Hawaii ? I started to realize , the first thing they asked about was the destination . The second thing they asked about was places to stay that were accessible . And the third thing they asked about was things to do that were accessible experiences . And so , I started to look into it , and there was really a complete lack of information about travel for people with disabilities .”
Research then followed and from his discoveries he inevitably became an ally and advocate . TravelAbility was born .
“ People have different ways of advocating ,” said Steinman . “ The first thing we did was create a newsletter (
Travelability Insider ) and people with disabilities were the ones editing that newsletter . Then in late 2019 , we
hosted a live conference in San Francisco . I saw people leaving that event wanting to do more after listening to the people with disabilities who were on panels talking about all the things that were challenges and barriers to them . And these were things that industry people previously thought were actually accessible . I also noticed that people were very fearful of getting involved - afraid they ' re going to offend somebody , so they don ' t know where to get started . The conference acted like a bridge two groups that would not normally have an opportunity to learn from one another . As members of the travel industry started to understand what they needed , they went back and actually implemented a lot of the features that they did not know or did not think about before .”
The Americans with Disabilities Act ( ADA ) has created some physical infrastructure to protect people with disabilities but there ' s no ADA that provides for information infrastructure for the travel industry , “ and that ' s something I thought we could provide . So , we started a landing page initiative ,” Steinman shared .